Tuesday, May 09, 2006

My Humps

I went for my second sensitivity training session last week.We were strongly encouraged to attend this “voluntary” session.By “strongly encouraged,” I mean forced.And by “voluntary,” I mean mandatory.

It opened with a GOOOOOOOOONNNNGGG!

We were then instructed to pair up and switch work rolls, i.e. supervisors acted as staff and staff as supervisors.I was paired up with a woman who we refer to as Jabba.Sure, the earth trembles, shaking my cube walls as she passes on her way for her breakfast (Doritos and Mountain Dew)- but we don’t call her Jabba simply because she’s a big girl.We call her Jabba because she is actually evil.She even has a sidekick, who I call Salacious (though nobody has figured out why*).

At any rate, she had to be a crap employee and I had to be her boss in the play acting and she was so mean I couldn’t focus enough to complete the task with any success.I actually compacted into a tiny ball on my chair.Eventually, her aggressive wining tirade was brought short by another (atonal) chime of the GOOOOOOOONNNG.After which she gave me a half-hug (NO LIKEY THE TOUCHY!!!) and said, “Whew all this acting is hard, thank God I don’t have to be like that all the time.”Well, while you don’t HAVE to be a bitch all the time, you do manage it at least 8 hours a day.

Next we were instructed to take a break for cookies; and thank God I grabbed a couple extra.Our next activity was to decide what animal our “emotional selves” were. Animals are meat and meat is good.But somehow “emotional animals” didn’t have much appeal to me. Emotions are suspiciously similar to feelings (nice try, Tricky) and everyone knows I DO NOT TALK ABOUT FEELINGS.

As she announced the criterion for picking our “animal selves” I let out just one snort. As people commented that they were bunnies, turtles and tigers in emotionally charged situations, I was completely unable to look at anything beyond my shoes.Making any eye contact with people who seriously believe themselves to be “emotional opossums” would actually have sent me headlong into the Giggle Loop.

After a long term of silence, I determined that I am a Camel.Camels are useful, often amusing, but uncooperative and stubborn.In conflict situations a camel will simply sit down.If you continue to bother it, it will spit at you.If you foolishly persist, a violent kick or bite may head your direction.

Momentary relief at coming up with something to say was instantaneously destroyed with the realization that my entire supposition that this entire exercise was bullshit was slightly flawed in that I definitely do resemble a camel in that particular sense.But not all senses, my milk is not considered an aphrodisiac in Ethiopia.Yet.

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*Salacious Crumb is a Kowakian Lizard Monkey.You know the thingy that Jabba hangs out with.It screeched when R2-D2 zapped it on the sand barge when they were trying to feed Luke to the Sarlacc… uhm.You know, the part with the gold bikini….Nevermind.